cover story - Joe Bonamassa

WORKING CLASS 

HERO 

Joe Bonamassa Tells How Loud 

Amps, Heavy Strings, and Hard 

Work Created His Best Record Ever 

AT A GUITAR MAGAZINE, YOU GET A LOT OF PARENTS PUSHING 

a lot of would-be guitar star kids in your face—children not 

even in their teens who can play a Satriani tune or a Stevie Ray 

Vaughan solo “note-for-note” (they always say that). Despite 

the fact that some of these kids actually can play, it’s very rare 

for any of them to rise above the level of a trained monkey. They 

know the notes, but they get very little of what’s behind the 

notes: the sound, the personality, the soul. And most of them 

never do, because if they did, we would know about them. 

One promising young kid who somehow 

managed to run the gauntlet of the music biz 

while getting his chops, tone, and tunes together 

is on our cover this month. Joe Bonamassa was 

one of those youngsters who could blaze 

through an SRV tune when he was 11. He possessed 

technique and knowledge that so belied 

his youth that it was only natural that if people 

didn’t curse him with the dreaded label of 

“The Next Stevie Ray,” they would at least 

burden him with the “child prodigy” tag that 

dragged down so many of his contemporaries. 

When the discussion turns to the idea that 

he was some sort of wünderkind, Bonamassa 

BY MATT BLACKETT 

JK 

JK 

gets thoughtful. “As far as me being a prodigy,” 

he says, “I listen back now to myself when I 

was a kid, and I think I was on the line between 

being a prodigy and just being good for my age. 

There were times when I was really good and 

I excelled and there were times when I was 

pretty bad.” 

If he was ever pretty bad, B.B. King didn’t 

see it. King talked about Bonamassa being the 

kind of one-in-a-million talent that would be 

“legendary before he’s 25.” Another guy who 

managed to catch some of Bonamassa’s good 

days was Danny Gatton, who saw such a unique 

artist that he took a 12-year old kid under his 

PHOTOGRAPH BY RICK GOULD 

GUITAR PLAYER APRIL 2009 81

COVER STORY Joe Bonamassa 

wing and out on the road, providing lessons 

and advice. The guidance Bonamassa got 

from these two kingpins, along with jam 

sessions with a who’s-who of blues gods, 

spurred him on to practice his ass off, study 

his music history, get his sound together, 

and make a go of it. 

Bonamassa is more right than he knows 

when he says he’s good for his age. That was 

true when he was 11 and it’s even truer now. 

Even though he’s just in his 30s, he’s been 

gigging for 20 years and he has the depth 

and power in his playing of someone with a 

lot more miles on him. He’s an old soul, and 

that comes through in his bends, vibrato, 

singing voice, and note choices, which—with 

each passing year—get more restrained and 

refined. 

Bonamassa is also good for his age in the 

sense that he’s good for his era. He embodies 

a refreshing work ethic and outlook on 

life that says no matter how fortunate you are, 

how many breaks you’re given, or how much 

god-given talent you possess, it doesn’t mean 

you don’t have to work at it. He knows there 

is no free lunch (despite the fact that B.B. 

King once gave him half of his sandwich). 

He’s a dude who is willing to work for a living. 

He’s not chasing fame or glitz or glam. 

1958 Gibson 

ES-140T 

82 APRIL 2009 GUITAR PLAYER 

He wants to get a good sound, take a good 

solo, and hopefully make people happy along 

the way. 

His formula is paying off. He has worked 

with celebrated producers Tom Dowd 

(Coltrane, Cream, Clapton, Allmans, etc) 

and Kevin Shirley (Black Crowes, Aerosmith, 

Led Zeppelin). His last two albums have 

debuted at number one on the Billboard blues 

chart. He has won GP’s Readers’ Poll award 

for Best Blues Guitarist two years running, 

famously tying none other than Buddy Guy 

one of those years. His tours have gotten 

stronger every year, although he still prefers 

the B.B. King-approved theater circuit to 

stadiums. It makes perfect sense that Bonamassa’s 

new record would be called The Ballad 

of John Henry [J&R Adventures], because Bonamassa 

is a modern-day working-class hero. 

Conducting this interview from the very 

bedroom in upstate New York where he 

learned how to play guitar at the age of four, 

Bonamassa obviously has not forgotten 

where he came from. He’s good for his age. 

He’s good for this age. 

Lots of guys can play good blues in a bar, but very 

few can make a studio blues record that has 1/10th 

of that energy or vibe. How do you pull it off? 

It is very difficult to capture that energy 

in a studio. The studio tends to be a very 

sterile environment by design. Every track 

is separated. You get perfect separation of 

the toms, the kick and the snare, perfect separation 

between the guitar and the bass, and 

obviously the vocal. And that’s not really 

what blues music sounds like. There are people 

out there who believe that what I play is 

not blues, but think about blues-based music, 

like Jeff Beck’s Truth, Tons of Sobs by Free, Led 

Zeppelin I, The Hard Road by John Mayall’s 

Bluesbreakers with Peter Green, the “Beano” 

album. These are my favorite albums of all 

time in the blues-rock genre and they all 

have this one common trait: Everything melts 

together. The drums melt into the bass, the 

bass and drums melt into the guitar, the vocal 

is panned to one side with the reverb return 

on the other. To Kevin Shirley’s credit, he 

allows for all that. Kevin deserves most of 

the credit on these albums. He’s the guy who 

spearheads the vision, takes me out of my 

comfort zone, and forces me to play different 

stuff. He also engineers the whole thing 

so that it has the sound of a live band in a 

room, but is separated enough that it doesn’t 

sound lo-fi. So, that’s my secret: I hire a guy 

named Kevin Shirley. 

1950 Gibson ES-5 1961 Guild X-375 Early-’60s Airline 1953 Hoyer 

Regent 

PHOTOS:RICK GOULD

Joe Bonamassa COVER STORY 



JK 

BONAMASSA’S LIVE RIG 

AX Gibson Inspired by Joe Bonamassa 

Les Paul. 

RACK (top to bottom) Monster 

Power conditioner, Solid State 

Logic XLogic Alpha Channel (for 

acoustic), Peterson VS-R Strobo 

Rack tuner, Electro-Voice wireless 

unit, drawer with Keeley-modded 

Boss DD-3 delay, Boss RV-5 

reverb, T.C. Electronic chorus, Diaz 

Vibramaster. 

AMPS (left side) Van Weelden 

Twinkle Land, Carol Ann JB-100, 

(right side) Category 5 JB Custom, 

Marshall Silver Jubilee. Cabs— 

Mojo Musical Supply 4x12s 

perched atop Auralex 

Great Grammas. 

PEDALBOARD (top row, left to 

right)—Voodoo Lab Pedal Power 

(2), Whirlwind Selector, Fulltone 

tremolo; (bottom row, left to right) 

Boss DD-3 delay, Ibanez TS808 

Tube Screamer, Gaspedals Carb, 

Custom Dunlop Fuzz Face (originally 

made for Eric Johnson), Lehle 

1@3 A/B/C box, Vox wah. 

Moog Theremin 

with Boss delay 

and Ernie Ball 

volume pedal. 

84 APRIL 2009 GUITAR PLAYER PHOTO: RICK GOULD

The Ballad of John Henry has a real depth to 

it, not just in the playing but in the singing too. 

What do you attribute that to? 

I went through some personal problems 

this year at home, and this record is more 

autobiographical than my past work, which 

I think is a good thing. I’ve always been shy 

about exposing too much of my own life on 

albums. This time, I just threw that out the 

window and wrote about true events. I used 

to get really indignant as a kid when people 

would say that I was too young to play the 

blues. I’d say, “No I’m not! My heart’s been 

broken too!” But now, at 31, after having 

gone through some more years of living, I 

know that there’s a sound that comes from 

experience, from being in the world a little 

bit. Hopefully I’ll sound even deeper when 

I’m 51. We’ll see. 

How did you create the tone that opens the 

record on the title track? 

That was my live rig: a Marshall Silver 

Jubilee, a Category 5 Super Lead-type of amp, 

a Two-Rock, and a Carol Ann JB-100, which 

is basically a big clean amp. We set up a couple 

of room mics, four mics on the amps, and 

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I just hit a big dropped-DDchord with a wah 

pedal and a Fulltone tremolo. The main 

rhythm tone is an Ernie Ball John Petrucci 

baritone. It’s a strange choice for my style of 

playing, but these are fantastic guitars. I think 

people tune them down to B with lighter 

strings, but we tune them to C and put heavy 

strings on them and they sound fantastic. It’s 

almost like a Danelectro tone. 

When the Dobro comes in at 0:45, there’s a 

spooky little part that sounds like harmonics. 

That’s rhythm guitar underneath the 

Dobro. Kevin grabs bits and pieces from different 

takes and he does a lot of this stuff 

without telling me. He puts these little textures 

in the songs. He might take something 

from the end of the song and put it in the 

verse. It’s not necessarily something I played 

right in that spot. We talk about this a lot. 

We make records for people who buy songs 

off of iTunes, but we also make records for 

the audiophiles, who buy them on vinyl and 

spin them on really expensive systems with 

$2,000 headphones. We make sure we put 

in these little interesting things underneath 

what you’ll hear on computer speakers. 


Your slide solo in “The Ballad of John Henry” 

takes the song to an all-new place. How did that 

come together? Are you in standard tuning? 

It’s standard, but down two full-steps to 

C. Tom Dowd used to tell me that I would 

cheat because I play slide in open tunings. 

Over the years I’ve forced myself to play more 

in standard. When we cut that lead, I was 

just going to play a regular solo, but then I 

happened to see a slide sitting on a music 

stand. I grabbed it and went for it, and I think 

it has a cooler texture than if I had just done 

my normal blazing over the top of it. That’s 

the cool thing about how we record. We do 

most of it live, and you’re reacting the way 

you would in a gig situation. It feels more 

like you’re playing in a venue than a studio, 

which is good. 

Your lead tone on “Jockey Full of Bourbon” 

sounds like it has a lot of room on it. Is that the 

same rig? 

No. I had a bunch of my old amps in my 

folks’ basement—probably 15 or so: my 

blond Bassman, a blond Tremolux, old 

Vibroluxes, etc. We shipped them out to California 

and I started setting them up. The 

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86 APRIL 2009 GUITAR PLAYER PHOTO: MARTY MOFFATT

only two that still functioned after 15 years 

in the basement were the Bassman and the 

Tremolux. I hooked them up and they 

sounded great with a Les Paul. I turned the 

amps up to 9 and miked them with Sennheiser 

421 room mics and a couple of Shure SM57s 

and Beyer condensers on the cabs. All of a 

sudden this massive tone came out of the control 

room monitors. I ran those with a tube 

Echoplex and an Arion chorus pedal. 

The tone doesn’t sound very chorused. 

This company called Xotic Effects sent me 

this thing called an X-Blender, which is an 

effects loop for amps that don’t have loops. 

It’s got controls for bass, mid, treble, and overall 

volume. So I ran the tube Echoplex and 

the chorus through this external loop and 

blended them in subtly. You don’t really hear 

the chorus, but it added this low end because 

you can EQ the loop, which EQs the overall 

sound. So the bottom end, delay, and 

chorus were kind of melting into the 

overall sound, giving it this bigness and 

dimension without an over-chorused sound. 

How did you get the boxier tone that’s on “Story 

of a Quarryman”? 

That’s the same rig. Once we got the two 

Fender amps working, I used them exclusively 

for the rest of the sessions, which 

included the songs “Story of a Quarryman,” 

“Jockey Full of Bourbon,” “Happier Times,” 

and “Last Kiss.” Getting those amps working, 

though, wasn’t easy. There were times 

where you would have to walk into the amp 

room, hit them on the top to get them to 

stop crackling, and then cut the track. I had 

to leave them on standby overnight, to just 

run some current through them. Basically, 

the first half of the record was cut with my 

live rig. Then we discovered this great tone 

with the Fenders and the room mics and we 

used it for the second half. 

Was that a Les Paul? 

It was. I have a couple hundred guitars, 

but I’m so proud of these Gibson Inspired 

by Joe Bonamassa Les Pauls that I primarily 

used them on the whole record. I don’t plan 

on breeding, and these goldtops are like my 

children. I played some other guitars. I used 

an ES-335, I played an ES-175 on a couple 

of things, to double certain parts for a different 

texture so it’s not just the midrange-y, 

wall of Les Paul sound. I also played a Gibson 

Lucille, but no Strats or Teles on this 

record. They were there, but they just sat 

there. There was no reason other than the 

fact that the goldtop sounded so good, and 

the sound we were going for on the record 

was somewhat bigger than what the Fend- 

ers were willing to give. I was in a Les Paul 

frame of mind. I’ve really gotten to where I 

can finesse the Les Paul. If I want a nice clean 

sound, I can get that by working the volume 

and tone controls. Then, if I need a solo tone, 

I can turn up and it’s there. 

How do you set the controls on your Les Pauls? 

The switch is in the middle and it’s 75 

percent lead pickup and 25 percent rhythm 

pickup. It doesn’t do that two-pickup thing, 

the Steve Cropper sound. This gives you 

more lead pickup, but it mellows out the 

sound just a bit so it has a different tone. 

If I didn’t know better, I’d say the harmonics 

in “Funkier than a Mosquito’s Tweeter” were a nod 

to Mr. Edward Van Halen. 

That was a nod to Van Halen. I always 

liked his playing, but I was more into the 

English guys. It took me until later to really 

appreciate how good he was. As I got more 

into rock, I listened to him some more and 

saw that he always came back to the blues 

in a weird way. His voicing was very bluesy. 

That song was also a nod to Jeff Beck. I 

hooked up what I call my Jeff Beck rig—not 

that he owned it—but this is Jeff Beck circa 

1972. A 50-watt Marshall head, which was 

actually a Park 75, and an old basket-weave 

cabinet. I plugged into a Colorsound Tonebender 

(which I bought in a shop in Manchester 

England), a wah pedal, and a Les Paul. It’s 

more like his Rough and Ready-era rig. 

Do you have a favorite tone on your new record? 

The solo tone on “Happier Times.” It’s 

the most expressive and the warmest, and 

it’s the closest to the sound that I always 

envision in my head. Everybody has a sound 

in their head. Achieving it is always a work 

in progress, at least for me. When I hear that 

song, it has the right kind of complex mids 

that I like, but it’s bright—not too dark like 

a jazz tone. It also has a big bottom end. That 

tone makes the solo very expressive and 

heartfelt. I think some of that is in the hands, 

and some is in the way I approached the solo. 

It’s also the way the amps happened to be 

on that particular day. That was my live rig. 

Has your live rig changed since you made the 

record? 

It has changed subtly. I’m using one Marshall 

Silver Jubilee. There’s also a Category 

5 Joe Bonamassa model. Those guys down 

in Texas at Category 5 wanted to build me 

an amp, and so I said, “Okay—build me a 

1968 Marshall Super Lead with a Dumble 

mid boost.” About six months later this amp 

shows up and it’s exactly what I envisioned. 

It’s got that Billy Gibbons Super Lead tone, 

but with a mid boost to bring it forward. It 



sounds fantastic. I have a Carol Ann JB-100. 

It has four 6L6s, it’s a 100-watt amp, and I 

use it for a lead tone. It’s a really nice 

midrange amp. There’s not a lot of top or a 

lot of bottom, but it’s really complex in the 

mids and blends well with the Silver Jubilee. 

I sometimes switch the Carol Ann out with 

a Two-Rock Custom Signature Reverb. Finally, 

I just got my second Van Weelden Twinkle 

Land. I use that for my semi-distorted clean 

thing, blending it with the Marshall. 

And there are two amps on at once? 

There are two heads on at any one time, 

and the Silver Jubilee is always on. The Carol 

Ann and the Marshall is one tone. The Marshall 

and the Category 5 is another tone, etc. 

The oversized 4x12 cabs I use are split vertically 

so it’s two 12s for each head. Each 

pair of 12s is baffled and sealed separately. 

It’s like having 4 2x12 cabs without having 

to lug all those 2x12s. 

Do you set the controls the same way every night? 

I set them the exact same way every night 

and there are two reasons. I use these things 

called Auralex Great Grammas, which are studio-designed 

foam pads that the amps sit on. 

You put your 4x12s on them to decouple them 

from the stage. You don’t get the rumble 

from the stage, which is sometimes hollow, 

sometimes not. It varies every day. The Great 

Grammas make it much more consistent by 

taking the stage out of the equation. I also 

use these shields in front of my cabs—angled 

Plexiglas baffles that are shaped like an “M.” 

The Plexiglas has to have angles in it. If you 

just use straight Plexiglas across the front, 

it’s going to sound very harsh and it’s not 

going to do much good at all. So I set my 

amps the same every night because they’re 

always in their own little environment. The 

tone and the volume don’t vary from room 

to room. 

Are certain amp combinations louder than 

others? 

The volume differences are not that great. 

There are perceived volume differences 

because some amps have more midrange 

than others. Some amps have more gain than 

others, and some have more or less top end. 

The more midrange-y amps come out forward 

more. Here’s the deal: The Van Weelden 

and the Carol Ann are 6L6, Fender-based 

circuits. The Marshall and the Category 5 

are Marshall-based circuits. The Marshall 

Fender blender—In 

addition to his live rig 

(at left), Bonamassa 

used a passel of vintage 

Fender amps in 

the studio. 

types will break up sooner than the Fender 

types. I like the tone you get by combining 

them, because you get all the articulation 

from the Fender type and then you get all 

the saturation you need for solos from the 

Marshall. You get the best of both worlds. 

What are some examples of a good multi-amp 

rig, and what mistakes do players commonly make? 

Eric Johnson is certainly an example of a 

guy who got it right. He had three separate 

rigs: He had a clean rig, he had a semi-distorted 

rig where he used the Dumble Steel 

String Singer, and he had his Marshall rig, 

and he would switch between the three. The 

people who get it wrong are the ones who 

think that because they have an A/B box they 

have a multi-amp rig. It’s not that simple. 

You’ve gotta get your phasing correct. You 

have to make sure the ground is proper. If 

you plugged in my four heads with normal 

three-pronged cable, it would buzz like crazy. 

You have to go through the rig with ground 

lifters and painstakingly figure out what to 

lift and what not to lift to get it as quiet as 

possible. Speaker choice is also critical, 

because the key is to use the amps for different 

frequencies. I use EV EVM-12Ls because 


they’re true—no extra coloration, no extra 

overdrive. Whatever the amp gives you, the 

EV spits out. If I’m running a lot of mids on 

the amp, the EV is going to give me those 

mids. The other pitfall is people just use two 

of the same amp in stereo, and that to me is 

not a multi-amp setup. That’s just twice the 

power. Another problem is a lack of power. 

People are constantly showing up with amps 

that are 18 watts, 20 watts, maybe 50 watts, 

and they say, “My 50 watts will beat that 

Jubilee’s 100 watts.” Well, I’ll take that Pepsi 

challenge any day. Maybe you’re going to get 

close in perceived volume, but in clean headroom—no 

way. You have no clean headroom. 

The amp’s collapsing before you even begin. 

It takes a lot of power to drive the mids the 

way they need to be driven. Keeping the low 

end tight takes a lot of power. That’s why I 

use 100-watt amps, and that’s why I use amps 

with different frequency bands. 

Do you ever like playing through just one amp? 

I’m not a firm believer in one amp being 

able to do it all. Every manufacturer has what 

they think is the ultimate amp—I think I 

saw that they’re up to six channels now. 

Who needs six channels and 50 knobs? I 

walk up to an amp like that and think, “I 

don’t even know how to turn this thing 

on, let alone set it so it will work.” There 

are some exceptions. You plug into an old 

Marshall Super Lead, put a reverb on it, and 

it’s just magic. 

Go back to your first album. What do you hear 

in your playing and what do you hear in your tone 

when you spin that record now? 

I know people really dig that album. It’s 

one of my biggest thrills in life and one of 

my biggest regrets at the same time. The 

biggest thrill was that I got to work with Tom 

Dowd, who was like a father to me and really 

set the tone for the rest of my career. My 

biggest regret was that I didn’t have the skills 

at the time that were worthy of working with 

a guy like him. When I listen to it, I can tell 

that I didn’t have my rig together. I hear a 

kid who was still trying to find himself and 

his sound, just plugging anything into anything 

with no idea of how it worked. I was 

using two Marshalls and it was more volume 

and less sound. You can put amps in a room 

and get really loud and you think it sounds 


big, but when you mic it up, it sounds really 

small. I never got that concept back then. I 

didn’t get it until I started really listening to 

what each amp was doing. I’ve learned a lot 

since that album, and that’s what I hear when 

I listen to it. I cringe a little bit with the vocals, 

too. I wasn’t that great of a singer. I wish I 

could make that album now. I think I could 

do a lot better and I could achieve more of 

the stuff I would want to hear. 

For your fans, that record is a crucial document 

of where you were as a musician, warts and all. 

I used to wonder why people might like 

it over some things that I think are better, 

but I’ve learned that there’s a certain charm 

in the struggle. When I hear my early work, 

I hear the struggle to get the notes out, to 

sing the parts, and the struggle of writing the 

tunes. I think that’s why some people are 

drawn to it: It’s real. I’ve always toyed with 

redoing the vocals on that whole album, but 

I haven’t because people do like it. I read an 

interview with Clapton where he said he 

hates the way he sounded with John Mayall. 

I think, “How can you hate that? You were 

on fire!” But that wasn’t what he envisioned 

JJ Cale Roll On 

Includes the single “Roll On” featuring Eric Clapton 

AVAILABLE AT: 

Amazon, Amazon.com and the Amazon.com logo are 

registered trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. 

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for himself. That’s just where he was in 1966. 

The grass is always greener for all guitarists. 

When the great players no longer have to struggle, 

it’s usually bad for their music. 

It really is an interesting concept. For an 

artist, there’s the struggle to make it, and 

there’s a fire and a hunger that fuels that. 

Then, if you make it, the challenge is to keep 

the fire and the hunger that in reality don’t 

exist anymore. The whole reason those players 

did make it is because of that fire. It’s a 

very strange phenomenon. If things get too 

easy, it definitely translates into recordings 

and live shows. 

Speaking of struggling, do you still string your 

electrics with .011s? 

I do. My electrics and acoustics have the 

same gauges: Ernie Balls, .011-.052. 

How does using heavier strings on your 

electrics affect your tone and your technique? 

From a tonal standpoint, you get this very 

nice connection between the wound strings 

and the unwound strings. The transition 

between the wound and plain strings can 

sometimes get a little strange because you’re 

going from this nice warm and inviting tone 

with low end to having no low end and a 

very bright, fretty kind of sound. The .011s 

give me a smooth transition between the 

wound strings and the plain strings, so it 

doesn’t sound like you’re playing a different 

guitar. It’s very even. I also think that when 

you’re bending the high strings, it gives you 

a creamier sound that’s not as strident. I 

think the added mass drives the input of the 

amp a little more and you get a little more 

overdrive. That matters more when you’re 

going for natural power amp gain. If you plug 

into a Boogie Dual Rectifier, there’s plenty 

of gain for everyone and you can use whatever 

strings you want. 

On a technical level, I look at it like this: 

I’m not a shredder guy. I’m not fast enough 

to be a shredder guy, but I have shredder tendencies 

that I think get in my way. I have a 

tendency to put in a million notes and show 

off to the world, and that’s not usually my 

best solo. So, the .011s keep me from going 

there all the time. I can ramp up to it but 

I’m not living there, overplaying all the time. 

Tell the story of when you were at a gig as a 


kid and some band’s guitarist didn’t show up. 

It was a blues festival in upstate New York 

that got rained out and moved indoors. One 

of the bands’ guitarists didn’t show, so they 

did this open call on the mic, the classic, “Does 

anybody play guitar?” My dad asked me if I 

wanted to go have some fun. I was an adventurous 

11-year old, so I went up there and 

played. The crowd liked it, partly because it 

was a little kid playing, but I did pretty good. 

The promoter of the show came up and introduced 

me to James Cotton. I sat in with James 

Cotton that day and things started to snowball 

from there. That year I got to sit in with 

Duke Robillard, Albert Collins, Clarence 

“Gatemouth” Brown. A year later, I’m on stage 

with B.B. King and Buddy Guy and John Lee 

Hooker. What a year! I had pretty much run 

the gamut of blues heavyweights, sharing 

stages with them. I was completely blown 

away. And that rained-out blues festival was 

sort of the beginning of it all. 

All that led to you meeting Danny Gatton. 

What’s a good story about him? 

He ultimately became my quasi-mentor 

and guitar teacher for the last four years of 

his life. For a while there I was like the Mini- 

Me version of Danny. I had a Tele, I was pudgy, 

I slicked back my hair. The coolest story is 

this: I’m sitting in his Winnebago, which is 

parked outside the Cat Club in New York 

City. He said, “C’mon kid. I’m gonna give 

you a guitar lesson.” I loved his butterscotch 

’53 Telecaster. It was perfectly worn and just 

a perfect guitar. I always wanted to play that, 

but this time he said, “I’m not going to let 

you play the Tele. I have another guitar you 

can play.” He goes into the back and brings 

out Scotty Moore’s ES-295—the guitar Scotty 

recorded “Heartbreak Hotel” and all that stuff 

on. He said, “Today we play jazz. You’re not 

allowed to play blues.” I was nervous because 

I didn’t know anything about jazz. So he starts 

teaching me these chords and how to walk 

a bass line, etc. He looked at me and said, 

“You know kid, you don’t know anything 

about jazz. You don’t know anything about 

rockabilly, you don’t know anything about 

real rock and roll like Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent 

and the Blue Caps, and Chuck Berry.” 

So here I am, a 13-year old kid sitting in 

Danny Gatton’s Winnebago and suddenly 

my life went from mono to stereo. A week 

later, he called and said, “Write these records 

down.” I wrote them down and bought them. 

It was stuff that influenced me for the rest 

of my life: Charlie Christian, a guy named 

Howard Reed who played with Gene Vin- 

Joe Bonamassa FEATURES 

cent, Merle Travis, James Burton, Doc Watson, 

and all of a sudden I’m playing jazz, 

country, and bluegrass. It’s hard to quantify 

Danny’s influence on my playing. 

Lots of promising guitarists who came up 

around the same time as you have seen higher 

highs and lower lows. What’s your take on that? 

I have this theory called the Sir Edmund 

Hillary Effect. I would rather be three quarters 

of the way up the mountain and stay 

there for 35 years than shoot for the top of 

the mountain and fail. A lot of people in this 

genre who make that last leap to see the 

mountaintop of pop stardom—where they 

no longer want to play 2000 seaters and 

want to sell out arenas and get radio— 

ultimately end up back at base camp. I’ve 

seen it with friends back in the ’90s. They 

were in these cult hippie bands and they 

had a couple of big hits and now they’re 

playing smaller venues than I am. How did 

that happen? They sold millions of albums. 

But once you get into the hit business, they 

want another hit. It’s a cruel, fickle business. 

I’m not in the hit business or even the 

blues business. I’m in the entertainment 

business. I’ve gotten a reputation for putting 

on a good show, so people don’t come 

to hear one particular song. That freedom 

is awesome. I’m happy to be at three quarters. 

I want to do this for the rest of my life. 

I want to keep making quality records. I 

never had a radio hit and I probably never 

will and I’m fine with that. If radio wants 

to play one of my songs, fine, but there will 

be no pretense about it. 

Have you heard any youngsters that you 

wanted to take under your wing, to pay it forward 

for what Danny Gatton and B.B. King did for you? 

I’ve done that with a couple of people. 

There’s a kid in England named Scott 

McKean. He’s really good. He plays a Stratocaster 

but I don’t hold that against him 

[laughs]. He plays it in a way that’s sort of a 

cross between Doyle Bramhall and Rory Gallagher. 

Really cool. I like his style, so I let 

him open a couple of shows. There’s a German 

guy named Hendrik Fleischleiter and 

he’s also really good. My favorite, though, 

isn’t a guitar player at all. He’s a harmonica 

player named L.D. Miller from Indiana. L.D. 

will be 15 this year, and I feel I can say this 

with certainty: He’s one of the top two or 

three harmonica players in the world at any 

age. He plays like John Popper, Little Walter, 

and James Cotton all in one. He’s got 

the fire and the soul. He’s a true prodigy. 

I’ve kind of helped him, like Danny helped 


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me. When we go on tour and pick the opening 

acts, I try to get young kids. I think that’s 

the greatest thing because if there’s not a 

new generation of kids playing this music, 

there won’t be a new generation of fans. And 

that will ultimately hurt guitar music and 

roots music in general. 

Of all the gigs you’ve played, is there a moment 

you can point to where you thought, “That might 

be the best solo I’ve ever played”? 

A lot of times, when I’m up there thinking 

that this is the coolest feeling in the 

world, I listen back to the tapes and it’s not 

as good as I remembered. But there was a 

time on this last tour. It was in Manchester 

England, a sold-out show at the Academy 

One. We were doing “The Great Flood” off 

the new album. I remember hitting the 

solo—my band came up with this great 

arrangement under the solo—and I’m out 

there on this big stage with perfect lights 

Bonamassa tears it up at the 

Austin City Limits Music 

Festival in 2002. 

and everything. We ended the song and the 

audience just kind of gasped, and then there 

was this eruption of applause and I got chills. 

I really felt like everyone in the audience 

was feeling the emotion that I was feeling, 

and vice versa. It was the most perfect 

moment on a concert stage I’ve ever had. 

We have a tape of it, and I won’t watch it 

because I think it’s going to look different 

and not be as cool as I remember it. I really 

only care if the fans think I played well, 

though. It’s nice to satisfy yourself, but 

money’s tight for people and they’re paying 

good money for tickets. If they think 

they got their money’s worth, I’ve done my 

job and we can move on to the next one. 

When it happens to coincide with when I 

think I played well, then it’s perfect—win 

win. There are probably four or five gigs out 

of ten where that happens, and that’s not a 

bad batting average. g 

92 APRIL 2009 GUITAR PLAYER PHOTO: SCOTT NEWTON/WIREIMAGE.COM

cover story - Joe Bonamassa

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